Nepal's Constituent Assembly, elected months earlier after a decade-long civil war between Maoist rebels and the state, voted 560 to 4 to end the monarchy founded by Prithvi Narayan Shah in 1768. King Gyanendra, who had drawn public fury after seizing absolute power in 2005, was given fifteen days to vacate the royal palace, closing one of South Asia's oldest ruling dynasties.
The vote in Kathmandu's Constituent Assembly ended a monarchy that had ruled Nepal, in one form or another, since Prithvi Narayan Shah unified the fractured Himalayan kingdoms in 1768. It came after a brutal decade-long Maoist insurgency that killed over 13,000 people and a 2006 pro-democracy uprising that had already stripped the king of most of his powers.
King Gyanendra had never been popular. He ascended the throne in 2001 under a cloud of suspicion after his brother King Birendra and nearly the entire royal family were massacred by Crown Prince Dipendra in a palace shooting, one of the strangest and most traumatic events in the country's modern history. Gyanendra's 2005 decision to dissolve parliament and rule directly, citing the Maoist threat, triggered mass protests that forced him to restore democracy the following year.
When the newly elected assembly finally voted, the result was lopsided: 560 in favor of abolition, just 4 against. Fireworks lit the Kathmandu sky as crowds celebrated in the streets. Gyanendra left the Narayanhity Palace quietly weeks later, reportedly taking only personal belongings, ending 240 years of Shah rule and turning the palace into a public museum.
Key people: Gyanendra, Prithvi Narayan Shah